English

Autumn 2

Winter's Child by Angela McAllister

Our book this half term follows a boy named Tom, who adores winter — he skis, skates and plays daily in the snow. One day, Tom meets a mysterious boy with ice-blue eyes who shares his love of snow and ice. They become friends and enjoy magical adventures together, building ice sculptures, exploring snow-covered valleys, riding reindeer, and more. 

While Tom revels in endless winter, his grandmother — who’s old and frail — suffers ever more from the cold, and the family starts running out of firewood and food. Eventually, Tom realises the cost of unending winter and understands that his friend is “Winter’s Child.” For spring — and his grandmother’s well-being — to return, winter must end, and Tom must say goodbye to his magical friend. 

The book blends magical winter wonder with a gentle, emotional message about balance, sacrifice, and the importance of change (seasons, life, and empathy).

Our Writing Outcome: To write an independent story, focusing on fantasy genre.

Mastery Keys are the key skills and learning objectives children work towards in our Pathways to Write scheme. They outline the specific writing skills—such as grammar, vocabulary, structure and creativity—that pupils need to master in each unit. The Mastery Keys listed below show the exact skills your child will be developing and help you understand what they are working towards in their writing.

Mastery Keys:

- Use conjunctions and adverbs to to express time, place and cause
- Use a or an correctly
- In narratives create plots, settings and characters
- Use inverted commas to punctuate speech

Our class read:

Wrong Tracks by Susan Brownrigg

Our end of the day text links to our history topic: The Rainhill Trials. In 1829, a young boy named Edward Entwistle lands a lucky job at the steam-locomotive works of the famous engineers George Stephenson and his son. They’re building a new locomotive to compete in the Rainhill Trials — a high-stakes competition that will decide who runs the first Liverpool-Manchester railway. When strange accidents and sabotage threaten their efforts, Edward and an engineering-obsessed friend, Prudence, team up to uncover who is trying to wreck the engine — racing against time to save the locomotive and the future of the railway.